


girl

by midnightkey



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist Manga, F/M, Female Character of Color, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Implied Relationships, Ishbal | Ishval, Origin Story, POV Alternating, POV Outsider, Parental Roy Mustang, Post Promised Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3879496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightkey/pseuds/midnightkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>with an accent of blood</i>
  <br/>
  <i>who speaks in foreign tongues</i>
  <br/>
  <i>whose vowels are the sound of metal clashing.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	girl

**Author's Note:**

> **CONTENT WARNING(S):** mentions of invalidation, varying levels of implied PTSD

The Arcanum Alchemist is a child of three when she is orphaned. No one knows what to do with her, this _~~war-~~_ orphaned child with nowhere but Ishval left to return to. (Fire burns rampant in the dark recesses of her thoughts. So it would seem that the dark pools of who-knows-what are not so dark and foreboding as originally thought.)

 _There isn't much that can be done for them,_ the sharpshooter says (the nice blonde lady, they remember, whose conscience weighs heavy with the lives of the innocent). The malnourished looking boy suggests that perhaps they just be sent back to Ishval, once the current Ishvalan policy is undone and the Ishvalans allowed to return to their holy land. His brother with the across-the-board milk vendetta is somewhat against this idea, because how exactly was this child to be raised?

No one had an answer to that question, and she found herself trying to find one. (What a shame it was that they were caught up in this war, all of them. It wasn't what they thought heroics looked like. ~~_(Who said they were being heroes?)_~~ ) 

At five, she decides to learn alchemy. She learns Xingese when a traveler passes through, who says he's the Emperor and claims to be immortal. She pretends that she's not doing this for herself - it's to avenge her dead parents, she tells herself, to give her people more than their holy land back. She tries to forget that she was merely a child and it was the death of one that sparked the Ishval Civil War.

She tries to forget the child with red eyes and dark skin and even darker blood whose death was the start of a bloody hell of a life.

A child of twelve who lost her parents when she was three passes the State Alchemist exam with flying colors and is named the Arcanum Alchemist. There are rumours about her.

"An Ishvalan State Alchemist!" people exclaim, "A female State Alchemist at that," as though there aren't plenty of female alchemists already, but when has there ever been a female State Alchemist?

"How old are they?" the military is asked, "Is it another child prodigy like Fullmetal or is it someone who can be thrown into battle, be used as a human weapon?"

No one wants to mention how Arcanum is but a child, months younger than Fullmetal was. No one wants to say how the last time a State Alchemist became one at twelve was nearly twelve years ago. (No one says a word about how Edward Elric was determined not to kill and how Arcanum is as well. Both of them were children who grew up too fast.)

Everyone had hoped that the next State Alchemist wouldn't be nothing more than a child and everyone had wanted their hope to be enough. But there was the law of Equivalent Exchange, and the Truth would not have their hope as payment.

The Arcanum Alchemist is a living reminder for so many of these State Alchemists, but they too, are a reminder for her as it was one of theirs that shot down her parents.

Back in Ishval, there is a small, cowering child that she will not allow herself to be.

 

* * *

 

With power at his fingers, Roy Mustang becomes Führer with Riza Hawkeye at his side. There is nothing but ice in Olivier Armstrong's stare, fitting for the Ice Queen that she is. He takes Arcanum with him as his personal aide, with all his subordinates trailing behind him. There is an entire people's blood on his hands and his conscience weighs heavy with the lives of the innocent. 

"It's raining today," he tells Riza. It is not raining and there's not a cloud in the sky, but Riza only smiles and says, "Of course, sir."

Roy watches a child of twelve who has every right to despise him for what he'd done in Ishval become an adult of twenty two.

"It's almost like she's your own," Riza notes, quiet but fiery and tired of war. Roy only shrugs in response, unused to being Führer and held together at the edges.""

"She's as good as," he says. "Someone had to raise her."

(Later, when Arcanum lands herself in the hospital and gets lost in it, of all things, there is a soft, sad _thank you_ among the buzz of hospital machinery. Roy almost broke then, because Arcanum was thanking him for treating her like a person after being invalidated for so many of her twenty two years. He still remembers the child who could hardly speak Amestrian, who took down Havoc with nothing but a water gun. Memories are nothing but distant.)

It rains in Central more often than not, and Riza calls him useless while Havoc laughs at his despair. Arcanum calls him a wet match and for a moment he forgets about the loss and suffering she's been carrying. (For a moment, he wonders how she doesn't despise him. He wonders how she trusts him after Ishval. He doesn't know how she can.)

For a moment, he doesn't feel quite so _useless_. 

They've grounded each other, he and Riza, a stress baking Führer and a sharpshooter who, above all things, stayed by his side. Murderers, both, following a river of blood downstream.

 _Alchemist, be thou for the people._ What a lie that has become.

 

* * *

 

She dreams of fire taking the lives of the innocent. She dreams of an Equivalent Exchange: her life for the lives of the people. 

 _I_ _t's not enough it will never be enough,_ she says, angry for feeling so small and pitiful and  _useless_. She had come here to try and save people. What people had they ever saved? ( _None,_ they think. There is no shortage of Amestrians who'd like her gone.)

War, the Arcanum Alchemist has found, is a constant in her life. Peace is not. There are no memories of peace, or of her parents. 

(They remember that during the rebuilding of Ishval, Roy Mustang was the only one among the Amestrian soldiers there who let his despair and guilt be shown. They remember now that it's why they trust him.)

But one day, she decided to stop being kind and instead hardened themselves against pain and loss and suffering.  _Girl,_ she was called, as though being one was a disadvantage, a weakness, a hindrance. It wasn't, she decided, and forged themselves out of steel.


End file.
